In the five and a half years that I’ve lived in Florida, I haven’t had to deal with a hurricane.

About two weeks ago that changed.

Now I know why Floridians get so pissed off during hurricane season.

As you all know, Hurricane Isaac came a-knockin’ at our doors. He stormed in, made a mess of everything, formed a sinkhole, and then went to bother Louisiana because they haven’t gone through enough lately.

Poor Louisiana.

They’ve really been getting the fuzzy end of the lollipop.

Isaac didn’t hit my area as badly as it did others, but it still dumped a Biblical amount of water into my neighborhood and there was no Moses to be found.

Noah doesn’t live in the acreage either so I was completely screwed.

When I went to sleep, my neighborhood looked like this.

And when I woke up, it looked like this.

And yes, those are real live ducks in the picture.

At one point my neighbor was rowing a canoe down the road.

Because the local government hates the acreage, we were flooded in for 3 full days.

On day 1 I was pretty happy about the situation. FAU was closed which meant I had nowhere to go for the day. I spent the morning exercising, showered, did some reading for class, worked on some lesson plans, and then watched tv. Considering I hadn’t had a day off in weeks I was pretty calm and well pleased with being trapped in my house. I went to bed thinking, “Oh well, this was a nice day. Back to school tomorrow I guess.”

I guessed wrong.

I guessed oh so very wrong.

Tuesday morning I woke up around 6am, stumbled out of bed, and walked to the front door. Upon opening the front door I noticed the moon shining off the lake, glimmering like a jewel in the deep blue sky.

The only problem with that picture is that the lake was our front yard.

I stepped outside and said,” Um…what?”

At this point, Chi-chi and He-Man had woken up.

Chi-chi: You may not want to do that.

Me: Why not?

Chi-chi: Gators.

Me: This state sucks.

There was a foot of water in my front yard, surrounding our entire property. When the sun finally rose, Uncle Nigel and I rolled up our pant legs and went exploring. Yes, I know that’s extremely dangerous, but such is life and then you die… or get flooded in…and have ducks swimming in your front yard. We didn’t catch cholera or any of the other heinous diseases that breed in still water, however, we did find about five large koi that had swam out of someone’s backyard pond and into our driveway.

Koi are extremely friendly.

But koi will scare the bejeepers out of you if you don’t realize they’re there.

Uncle Nigel: Good Lord the entire neighborhood is flooded.

Me: What are those?

Uncle Nigel: Some kind of fish maybe.

Me: NO! NO! GATOR! NO! SOMETHING TOUCHED ME!

Uncle Nigel: Gyasi, those are koi.

Me: Oh. My, my those are some pretty fish.

Uncle Nigel: Those things sell for about $200 a piece.

Me: Get me a net. That’s tuition money.

By now, dear reader, you should know that I have no shame or scruples about selling someone else’s fish in order to pay my school bills.

Grad school will build your intellect while degrading your morals.

Positive and negative consequences, it’s all positive and negative consequence.

We did not succeed in catching the koi (because He-Man knew who they belonged to) and at this point in time I was going stir crazy. I did not want to read another essay. I did not want to exercise. I did not want to send another email, write another lesson plan, or take another bloody photo of the ducks in the front yard.

The ducks were starting to mock me anyways.

Quaky bastards.

I decided that come hell or high water (poor choice of words) I was going to leave the house the next day.

Wednesday came and there was absolutely no improvement in our situation. The water was just as high as it had been the day before. He-Man was past the point of no return and refused to be beaten by a few inches of water. He decided that he was going to get coffee from 7-11. He was going to escape from Byng Island.

Unfortunately for Uncle Nigel He-Man decided this escape was happening with his car.

He-Man won’t risk the Camry.

Chi-chi and I stood by the shore and watched as they slowly turned the car around and crept out into the flooded road. They were about 2 feet out when Chi-chi cell phone rang.

Chi-chi: Hello?

Neighbor: Did you know there’s a car floating down the road?

Chi-chi: That’s Herman and Nigel.

Neighbor: Oh. Well, they’re making decent progress.

Chi-chi: What’s happening now? We can’t see them anymore.

Neighbor: They’re inching along slowly. They went too fast just now and made a wave.

Me: What’s going on? Who’s on the phone?

Chi-chi: I think they’re turning back.

Me: Why are they turning back?

Chi-chi: There’s a wave.

Neighbor: Wait they’re almost at the end of the street.

Chi-chi: They’re almost at the end of the street.

Me: Ugh, I knew I should have gotten in the car.

Chi-chi: I wouldn’t have gotten in the car.

Me: Is that a gator?

Chi-chi: That’s a log.

Neighbor: THEY MADE IT! THEY MADE IT!

Chi-chi: The neighbor says they made it.

Me: Mom, I’m pretty sure that’s a gator and I’m pretty sure that used to be a koi. I’m going back in the house.

It turns it that it really was a log, but I’m still not exactly sure what killed the koi.

I’m placing my money on the ducks.

They can be quite deadly when they have free reign over the neighborhood.